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An international collaboration between physicists at the University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, McGill University, and the University of Konstanz recently demonstrated a new framework for faster control of a quantum bit. First published online Nov. 28, 2016, in Nature Physics, their experiments on a single electron in a diamond chip could create quantum devices that are less to prone to errors when operated at high speeds.

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Biodiversity on earth is greatest in the tropics with the number and variety of species gradually diminishing toward the poles. Understanding exactly what shapes this pattern, known as the latitudinal diversity gradient, is not just key to knowing the nature of life on Earth, but it also could help scientists slow biodiversity loss and protect areas of the globe that generate a disproportionate variety of species.

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Michael Greenstone, a leading economist and the Milton Friedman Professor at the University of Chicago, has been appointed director of the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics.

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The University of Chicago is designating $25 million from its endowment to invest alongside established venture funds in startups led by faculty, students, staff and alumni, expanding a commitment to grow entrepreneurship and research commercialization on campus.

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In a new study, researchers at the University of Chicago explored whether mostly subconscious visual cues embedded in dilapidated buildings, overgrown lots and littered streets can fuel deviant behavior, reassessing the influential “broken windows” theory.

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The Giant Magellan Telescope Organization on Nov. 16 announced the appointment of Walter E. Massey and Taft Armandroff to the positions of board chair and vice chair, respectively.

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Understanding how carbon dissolves in water at the molecular level under extreme conditions is critical to understanding the Earth’s deep carbon cycle—a process that ultimately influences global climate change.

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New research suggests scientists could eventually help create materials that resist breaking or crack in a predictable fashion. Using both a simulation and artificial structures called metamaterials, scientists at the University of Chicago, New York University and Leiden University found material failure can be continuously tuned through changes in its underlying rigidity. The research, published Sept. 27 in PNAS, examined the effects of varying the rigidity of a material.

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New research conducted at the University of Chicago has confirmed a decades-old theory describing the dynamics of continuous phase transitions. The findings, published in the Nov. 4 issue of Science, provide the first clear demonstration of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism for a quantum phase transition in both space and time. Prof. Cheng Chin and his team of UChicago physicists observed the transition in gaseous cesium atoms at temperatures near absolute zero.

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Scientists at the University of Chicago, New York University and Leiden University could eventually help create materials that resist breaking or crack in a predictable fashion. The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Sept. 27, were the result of experiments and computer simulations in which researchers examined the effects of varying the rigidity of a material. Using both a simulation and artificial structures called metamaterials, they found material failure can be continuously tuned through changes in its underlying rigidity.

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It was while working in the Kent Laboratory building in the 1940s that Prof. Willard Libby and his UChicago associates developed radiocarbon dating—an innovative method to measure the age of organic materials. Scientists soon used the technique on materials ranging from the dung of a giant sloth from a Nevada cave; seaweed and algae from Monte Verde, Chile, the oldest archaeological site in the Western Hemisphere; the Shroud of Turin; and the meteorite that created the Henbury Craters in northern Australia.

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How do you make half the mass of two continents disappear? To answer that question, you first need to discover that it’s missing. That’s what a trio of University of Chicago geoscientists and their collaborator did, and their explanation for where the mass went significantly changes prevailing ideas about what can happen when continents collide.

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The University of Chicago is part of a collaboration that has been awarded $23 million by the National Science Foundation to increase the intensity of beams of charged particles, while lowering the costs of key accelerator technologies. This Science and Technology Center will contribute to scientific advances in many disciplines, including physics, chemistry and mathematics, by enhancing accelerator capabilities.

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A group of scientists from the University of Chicago has developed an ingenious way to spur checkpoint blockade cancer immunotherapy into more potent action. The therapy offers the hope of an effective treatment for intractable metastatic cancers including those of the colon and lung.

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In a novel test of the benefit a company can generate for consumers, a new study estimates just how much consumers are gaining from the technology company Uber, helping to explain the service’s popularity.

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Chondrite meteorites contain a puzzling mismatch in isotopic composition with Earth’s crust. The mismatch puzzles scientists because they long believed that Earth formed from planetary objects similar to meteorites. A new paper in Nature explains how this mismatch could have come about.

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A group of scientists at the University of Chicago’s Institute for Molecular Engineering has found a way to exploit the ability of liquid crystals to flow like a liquid, but display the orderly molecular structure of a crystalline solid.

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Community characteristics play an important role in perpetuating teen suicide clusters and thwarting prevention efforts, according to a new study by sociologists who examined clusters in a single town.

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A new analysis published this week in Nature Geoscience by the University of Chicago’s Tiffany Shaw and others finds that human-induced climate change complicates projecting the future position of such storms.

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James W. Cronin, a pioneering scientist who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1980 for his groundbreaking work on the laws governing matter and antimatter and their role in the universe, died Aug. 25 in Saint Paul, Minn. He was 84. Cronin, SM’53, PhD’55, spent much of his career at the University of Chicago, first as a student and then a professor.